Top games of 2023 played around the world and in Ukraine

While ordinary Ukrainians were buying New Year’s gifts and sharing recipes for festive dishes, the gaming community was summarizing the year and compiling ratings of the best and most popular games of 2023. Steam, Google, Metacritic, and many Ukrainian and foreign specialized media presented their tops according to a variety of criteria.

We have gathered the most interesting ratings in this article to understand what games people played in Ukraine and the world last year.

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Top games on Steam by gross revenue in 2023

This year’s list was compiled based on data for the period from January 1 to December 15, 2023.

• Sons Of The Forest
• Baldur’s Gate 3
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Counter-Strike 2
• Lost Ark
• Call of Duty
• Starfield
• Apex Legends
• Destiny 2
• PUBG: Battlegrounds
• Dota 2
• Cyberpunk 2077

The best games of 2023 according to the GameDev DOU community

The top games for PCs and other devices were determined based on the voting held on the website and Telegram channel, which reached almost 1,000 users. The percentage of votes given by the respondents for their favorite game is indicated in parentheses.

1. Baldur’s Gate 3 (49%)
2. Alan Wake 2 (14.5%)
3. Hogwarts Legacy (10.6%)
4. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom (6.5%)
5. Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 (6.2%)

As you can see, the leader was obvious, but there was a tough fight for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th places.

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The top games for PCs and more according to Metacritic users in 2023

• Baldur’s Gate 3
• The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Resident Evil 4
• Super Mario Bros. Wonder
• Marvel’s Spider-Man 2
• Alan Wake II
• Final Fantasy XVI
• Hogwarts Legacy
• Hi-Fi Rush
• Sea of Stars

Metacritic is considered the leading review platform in the video game industry. To evaluate a game, each review and digital score is accounted for. Then, they are averaged and weighted according to the game’s popularity, status, and volume of the critic’s reviews.

Games with the best graphics according to Digital Foundry

1. Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora

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2. Alan Wake 2

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3. Cyberpunk 2077

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It was not easy to choose the winner, say Digital Foundry experts. Each of these three games is worthy of attention, even though they are different in scale and visualization.

The top 10 cool games with the best graphics also include Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, RoboCop: Rogue City, Final Fantasy XVI, Super Mario Bros. Wonder, Hi-Fi RUSH, Resident Evil 4. The games are listed in a random order, without reference to a specific ranking place.

Google search query ranking in the Games category of 2023

1. Hogwarts Legacy
2. The Last of Us
3. Connections
4. Battlegrounds Mobile India
5. Starfield
6. Baldur’s Gate 3
7. Suika Game (Watermelon Game)
8. Action RPG Diablo IV
9. Atomic Heart
10. Sons Of The Forest

This rating reflects the interest generated by the release of the Wizarding World Hogwarts Legacy franchise. At the beginning of the year, the game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, later for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, and in the fall of 2023, the game was launched on Nintendo Switch. The average rating on the Metacritic website is 8.5 out of 10.

The Game Awards 2023 winners

The main event of the world’s game development industry took place in Los Angeles on December 8, 2023. During the annual awards ceremony, the winners in 31 nominations were announced, including:

• Game of the year, Community support, Best RPG, Best multiplayer — Baldur’s Gate 3
• Game direction, Narrative, Art direction — Alan Wake 2
• Game with social impact — Tchia
• Indie game — Sea of Stars
• Mobile game — Honkai: Star Rail
• Best VR/AR — Resident Evil Village
• Action — Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon
• Action/Adventure — The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom
• Fighting — Street Fighter 6
• Family game — Super Mario Bros. Wonder
• Sports/Racing — Forza Motorsport
• Simulation/Strategy — Pikmin 4
• Debut indie — Cocoon
• Most anticipated game — Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth
• Best adaptation — The Last of Us
• Esports game — Valorant

Baldur’s Gate 3 (6 nominations), Alan Wake 2 (3 nominations), and Forza Motorsport (2 nominations) were the leaders in terms of the number of winning nominations.

The most interesting game characters in 2023 according to Game Rant portal

• Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3

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• Cidolfus Telamon from Final Fantasy 16

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• Garl from Sea of Stars

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• Harry Osborn from Marvel’s Spider-Man 2

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• Karlach from Baldur’s Gate 3

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2023 was marked by the release of long-awaited projects, although not all of them made it to the top 10 best games. Still, the game development industry keeps expanding its horizons and responds to the question “What’s next?” with technological development. The introduction of artificial intelligence and virtual reality are becoming the driving forces that will determine the future of gaming. There is already first news in this regard: On January 10, Valve announced that it would allow releasing games on Steam with content (images, code, sound, etc.) created by AI. To do this, publishers must meet several requirements, and the game must be thoroughly checked for illegal content. Despite this, the decision was a significant step in the development of the industry.

Meanwhile, we are looking forward to this year’s releases and hope that 2024 will be a successful year not only for developers and gamers but also for Ukrainian localization, which is just at the beginning of its journey in the international game development world. This is a rather provocative topic at the moment, which is sparking a lot of discussion and debate. Not because of its relevance: there is no doubt that Ukrainians need translation into their native language. The only question is the quality of localization, which depends on many factors: the experience and qualifications of translators, their immersion in the topic, terminology unification, awareness of the needs of the end user (i.e., the gamer), etc. Therefore, everyone will benefit from having professional localization providers handle this task: developers, players, and the entire Ukrainian GameDev community.

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